Supreme Court upholds police "dog sniff" of truck

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Supreme Court upholds police "dog sniff" of truck

By Jonathan Stempel
WASHINGTON | Tue Feb 19, 2013 11:09am EST

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld a trained police dog's search of a truck for evidence, saying that training and testing records had established the dog's reliability and given the police probable cause.

The case was one of two the court has been considering this term about the validity of evidence obtained by drug-sniffing dogs and had been watched closely by criminal defense advocates.

At issue was the work of Aldo, a German shepherd whose "free air sniff" helped his police handler find methamphetamine ingredients inside Clayton Harris' pickup truck after it had been pulled over in Liberty County, Florida, in 2006.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the police officer reasonably believed there was contraband inside the truck after Aldo gave off an alert to its contents.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/19/us-usa-court-dog-sniffs-idUSBRE91I0RB20130219

[virgogal]

1. Good decision.

[Politicalboi]

2. I can say good decision because it's Meth

Had it been pot, I wouldn't say that.

[TheKentuckian]

4. The decision would apply to pot too. What you are supporting is the dogs being used to ferret out

probable cause. Other than what was found in the case, meth has nothing to do with the rendering at all. You think the precedent set only applies to meth? I don't get it.

The dogs themselves are a form or search that should require at least probable cause (reasonable suspicion, I sez), not a method to find probable cause. What kind of horseshit is that? Liberal justices my fucking ass. You cannot always side with power to the government from the people and be liberal.

For any folks that only have one benchmark, Roe v. Wade, you might want to wrap your heads around the actual basis of the decision which is PRIVACY. Silly folks pooh pooing privacy concerns will be stuck with their thumbs up their patooties as the whole works come apart around us, crown jewels and all.

[sybylla]

3. So by this rationale, the local drug dog should be retired.

They bring the dog into the local school once or twice a year. It always marks on a couple of cars in the lot and a couple of lockers. Yet, years of this activity, years of calling students out of class to have their cars/lockers searched has produced nothing. Zero.